The Computer: A History from the 17th Century to Today (Multilingual Edition)

Super interesting big book, the illustrations are great. I enjoyed the book 10 out of 10

First thing that blew me away before I even opened the box the book came in was its weight. Then the quality of paper and imagery. The historical coverage was amazing. This is a masterpiece book that will impress anyone who sees or reads it.

Very high quality (and super large and heavy ) coffee table / heirloom quality book that gives an excellent almost pop art history of the technology that changed the world. Great coffee table book for the discerning nerd :)

First off, I'd like to say that this is a massive volume. "Oversized" doesn't begin to describe it. As is the case with most Taschen books I've had the pleasure of perusing, The Computer is chock full of eye-catching photos, illustrations and various ephemera you'd likely never run across in a Google Images search. Odd choice of color for the cover aside, the layout is definitely up to the standard Taschen job well done. Interestingly, though, upon unwrapping and flipping The Computer open, the first page I ended up on had a factual inaccuracy. The beginning section has thumbnails of sorts, representing hallmarks, if you will, of various technological ages, with a date and name underneath. These line the sides of the introduction in the various languages that the book is written in, and are featured prominently. The error in question is very clearly a sprite of Mario from Super Mario Bros, with "Super Mario Bros" written underneath, with "1981" alongside it. Now, Super Mario Brothers did not release until 1985. Perhaps this was referring to the first appearance of Mario in Donkey Kong, which WAS released in 1981. Even so, Mario wasn't called Mario until 1983, when Mario Bros (no 'Super' prefix) was released in arcades. He was called "Jumpman" before that. Also, the sprite is very clearly the Mario from Super Mario Bros 1 for the Famicom/NES. No big deal, right? Unfortunately, a few pages later, I stumbled across another error, this time for the Sega Mega Drive. It lists it as "1990". The Mega Drive actually released in 1988. As the credited authors are European, I am wont to accept that they perhaps used the European release date, as, customarily, Japanese gaming hardware and software saw a later release date in Europe in the 80s and 90s. However, there are other instances where they got the date on Japanese tech correct, and used the Japanese release year. Now, really, I'm not trying to be pedantic or anything, here. I could really care less if they got two dates of things I know to be different, incorrect. However, what about the stuff in the rest of the book that I'm not as "up" on? Was that as ill-researched? I mean, I'm sure most people aren't buying this for research material, but if the authors are getting something that you can use a search engine to find in five seconds, wrong, what else is potentially bad info being passed on to the reader? And, at the end of the day, it IS a book that I paid 80 of my actual earth dollars for. If I wanted something factually dodgy with pretty pick-i-chures, I'd go to YouTube or reddit; at least they're free. But, pretty pictures galore it DOES have, and much like nearly everyone else, I bought this for glossy, hi-res photos of computers and their insidey parts. I definitely recommend this book, if you aren't obsessive about details that is. Oh, and the last part kinda sucks, imo. It's kind of a personal preference thing, but I genuinely don't want to hear about the ice bucket challenge and a bunch of bland crap that happened after plebs got their hands on smartphones. It's a weird tonal shift, and the last 15 pages or so read more like Time magazine.

The best parts of this book are excellent — the glamor shots of mainframe and minicomputers especially. As a coffee table book it serves well, so long as you don't thumb to the last third of the book. Laptops basically all look the same now. Cell phones basically all look the same. The later pages mostly contain PR photos of Silicon Valley billionaires and screenshots of early websites. The text is, throughout, unimpressive. There are errors in descriptions and dates. Some of the text is taken from Wikipedia, but where dubious claims are tagged "Citation needed" in wikipedia, they're just stated as fact in this book. Some of the errors are so obvious that it's clear nobody with subject matter expertise was involved in the editing. For example, if you believe the book, the cassette drive on a Commodore PET could store a megabyte of data, and Wordstar was the first word processor for personal computers. Not even close. The text repeatedly confuses the introduction of a new standard with that standard becoming universal. The editor trusts press releases, and in several places prints long-debunked hype as fact. The editor has a weird fascination with fax machines and videophones, which take up more of these pages than you would guess. Though the book is split into eras ("1965 - 1975", "1976 - 1993", etc.), within those chapters, there is no organizational scheme at all. So you'll have Italian adding machines of 1975 on one page and images from a 1965 prototype image sensor in California on the next page. The quality of the book drops off with the section from 1994-2005, and the section from 2006-present is even weaker. Beeple sold an NFT for $69 million! It's the most expensive art ever sold! We're not going to question that at all, nor can we show you what the art looked like. Here's a picture of Elon Musk, he invented Tesla! etc.

Excelente calidad. Es súper grande y lindo el libro.

This was a gift for my great grandson and he now knows how computers began.

Very well done. Fun to just look at.

El libro se ve excelente, pero requiere un manejo, envio y empaque con cuidado. Lo estoy regresando

Très beau livre!

Un capolavoro per appassionati di elettronica e design. Stupendo!

Very nice book. High quality pictures. Unique photos. I didn't see many of them. Going to show and explain to my kids. It's what I was looking for. I had similar book when I was schoolboy 30 years ago. But this book is 3 times better :)

Eine schöne Reise in die Vergangenheit des Computers. Sehr schöne Fotos.